One of the basic skills any cook needs to know is how to grill meat. This is especially true with venison, because it is so lean you have little leeway between perfect and overdone — and overcooked venison is gray, dry and livery. Blech.

By the way, everything I say here for venison loin also works for elk or antelope, or a fillet mignon of beef, moose or bison.

You can grill any venison steak, but backstrap or loin is a better cut for fast grilling. And here’s your first tip: Keep the venison backstrap whole. Don’t cut it into medallions. Yes, you can grill venison medallions, but they are far harder to grill successfully without drying them out. Besides, you would be grilling the cut sides of the medallion, leaving the sides pinkish. Not so pretty.

With a whole loin, you grill the sides and then, when you cut into it, you get to see that pink perfection.

So start with a piece of backstrap that’s at least 10 inches long, which is usually about 1 pound. Depending on how wide it is, that will feed 2 to 4 people, depending on how much else you have on the plate. Coat it in olive oil and salt it really well.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Grill over high heat, but with the grill cover open. This is important. You can grill-roast a venison loin, but it will overcook way faster — heat under the grill cover will cook the top of the loin almost as fast as the part that is closest to the fire. I rarely do this, preferring instead to take my time and let the fire do the cooking.

This also lets you baste the meat with your favorite sauce. I used my Jack Daniels-based BBQ saucein this case, but you could use anything you want. A lot of times I will just let fire, salt and smoke flavor the venison, with maybe a splash of lemon at the table.

How do you know it’s done? Use the finger test, which gives you a good idea about the doneness of the center of a piece of meat by touching it with your finger. My friend Elise has a good breakdown of the finger test here.

Lastly, let the meat rest, tented with foil, for at least 8-10 minutes before cutting into it. You can wait up to 15 minutes before losing too much heat. I cannot stress how important this is. Really. If you learn nothing else from this post, remember to rest your damn steaks! You will thank me later. OK, rant over.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Grilled Venison Loin or Backstrap

I’ve gone through much of the detail on how to properly grill a backstrap of venison (or elk, antelope, bison, moose etc.) above, but remember that this is done over high heat with the grill top open, and that it takes a good 15-20 minutes. Be patient and you will be rewarded.

If you use a barbecue sauce with this recipe, serve the venison with a side salad like potato, macaroni or bean salad, plus maybe some tomatoes and basil, corn on the cob, dinner rolls — you get the idea. Nothing overly fancy.

Coat the venison backstrap in oil and salt well. Set aside for 20 minutes at room temperature.

Get your grill hot, clean the grates and lay the venison on the grill. Paint with the BBQ sauce. Keep the grill cover open. Let this cook 5 to 8 minutes without moving, depending on how hot your grill is and how thick your venison loin is. You want a good sear, with good grill marks, on that side of the meat. Flip and repeat on the other side, painting that side with more BBQ sauce.

Do the finger test to check for doneness. If the venison needs some more time, turn it to sides that have not had direct exposure to the grill and cook for 2 to 3 more minutes, checking all the way. Paint those sides with BBQ sauce, too.

When the meat has been cooked to your liking, take it off the fire and let it rest, tented with foil, for 10 minutes. Serve with BBQ sauce on the side.

Hey Hank, I do this fairly frequently (that is, until we run out of backstraps). At butchering time and I cut mine into 6″-sections (good size for my family). It used to be that we made butterfly steaks of it at butchering time, but I didn’t like it. I now progressed to keeping as many pieces as whole as possible and deal with the fine cutting later, at cooking time, depending on what I want to do. Like you, I grill it or I also sometimes pan-sear it and then finish in the oven. My favorite way to serve is with herb butter. However, I’ve also at other times cut backstrap horizontally in half (making two flat pieces) because we do prefer all of our meat at least medium, and so it would cook faster.

To be quite honest, I also can’t imagine barbecue sauce in this context, because I like the fresh, wild taste of meat, pure and simple. It is very common for us to grill one at the butchering party (where the whole extended family does anywhere between 8 and 12 deer in one evening a few days after the big 3-day deer camp, which I don’t participate in by the way except coming up on a Sunday afternoon, gotta give the guys time to be themselves – but at least I don’t go shopping either as other deer-hunting widows, just hunt elsewhere the opening day).

Not everyone likes that gamey taste, so BBQ’s, Ketchup and other stuff comes in handy…….Especially with kids. I’m just sayin’. Don’t go judgin’ others. Just cause you like it one way, doesn’t mean everyone else has to.

My wife is Brasilian, and those guys are expert on the barbeque (which doesn’t carry well into Canada, land of the charbroiled burger nuggets drowned in sauce, because Canada thinks it has good barbeque and good game cookery, which it doesn’t).

The way they do meat like this is basically exactly how you describe it, except they cake the exterior with rock salt, then partially cook it around the sides like you do, then knock much of the salt off and slice it before finishing it on a hot grill. No sauces, just vinegary salads that suit it just lovely. And beer, of course.

I find if I do that over a fire of hardwood, then shut the barbeque, starving all the flame and forcing it into a smolder, I get an absolutely killer result.

Andrew – try that same rock salt routine with a pork loin – just don’t slice it right away.

I do use a thermometer – but stop at 140. By the time you rest it a bit it goes right up to the required 145. It is hard to wait!

And, as odd as this sounds, when I was totally out of ‘good’ hardwoods, I used some dry corn cobs – they worked well, just be careful of flaming embers if it is windy – another good reason to smother by cover at the finish.

In the interests of civility, I admit to allowing barbeque sauce if it’s only pork….

Now you’re talking, Hank! You know there the hill-man ( I refuse to be called a hillbilly. I’m from California, Damnit!) will never let go of my true love for grilled food! And back strap. Wow! I still haven’t made your bbq sauce recipe, but it’s happening soon. I hope you’re having a blast on the current leg of your book tour. I’ll look forward to duck hunting with you with when you get home.

Hi Andrew. I think you’re absolutely right concerning the Brazilians amazing barbeque mastery. The meat that they slice, slightly raw, they name it “picanha”. Wonderfully tasty, best with beer or even better with “caipirinha”, a strong distilled spirit produced straight from cane juice, served with lime and crushed ice. But I guess you’ve already know that.
But all in all, I guess, not sure, that they’ve learned the art of barbeque with the portuguese; last year will traveling up north in Portugal, we were invited to dinner «costeleta barrosã», a huge beef chop, tasty to the bone. Served with vegetables. But, this time, no beer or caiprinha, we drunk an exquisite Douro red wine.
Sydney Debtson

Thursday noon before the afternoon flight of dove season openers our host grilled over mesquite the back strap off a muley that must have been the size of a hippo. Wow! Wow! Right up there in flavor with the best of wild duck mixed with beef. . I gave him a copy of your book, Hank.

Did the rock salt on a pork loin. Very interesting result: the pork had enough water in it that the salt, while sitting above a smoky fire, solidified into a crust. I don’t think a drop of moisture dropped from the loin, and all of the juice was sealed in. Medium/low heat. The meat was incredibly moist and tender, with a nice rind on it. Really good. I cooked it over very dead and very dry diamond willow.

I have truly grown to love venison, of any stripe, cooked any way, but, of course, the backstrap, simply cooked, is my favorite. Last fall, one in our hunting group was so excited to share the bounty of his first deer in a long time, that he allowed us all to share in the backstrap, cooked on sticks over a fire. A wonderful memory.

Venison loin grilled with BBQ sauce features high in our BBQ summer days (when we get them) and for the potato side, Oven baked Jacket Potato as we call them in UK, which is the whole potato with the skin on baked in the oven, or you can wrap it in lots of foil and put on a BBQ grill

A side of sweetcorn and salad…hmmm. Grilled venison obviously a lot more tender than beef but so much more juicy and flavoursome…

Followed this recipe except the BBQ sauce and I used a local meat seasoning plus the olive oil and salt. WOW! Both my wife and I couldn’t believe the flavor. Absolutely mouth watering. I’ve forwarded this site to a few hunting buddies, thanks for sharing.

WOW! Amazing recipe! We were worried how it would turn out, but end result was a mouth-watering, tender, juicy tenderloin that even our children (each under ages 5) enjoyed! Can’t wait to share this meal with other family and friends!! Thanks for posting

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Thank you so much Hank Aaron Shaw. This was my first time grilling Venison and it turned out awesome. Observers were commenting that I should do this or do that but I stuck to your instructions and I wasn’t disappointed. Even more important, my wife loved it. The only modification I made was to sprinkle and rub in rock salt like I have seen my good friends the brazilians do.

Thanks Again for publishing this. And the finger test is astoundingly accurate.

Just an observation on butchering that I’ve found helps with this recipe. I noticed that when cooking a whole backstrap the rear end (bigger end) always seems to dry out. I never could get the entire loin to come out “good” at each end. Now I half the loins and package the smaller ends together and the larger ends together. It makes the cooking much easier to regulate.

I have been grilling whole chunks of game for a number of years. I say chunks cause parts of the ham can be delicious grilled whole as well. I usually marinate the meat in yoshidas gourmet sauce or some kind of teriyaki. The flavor is subtle and complements the wild game flavor. Otherwise I like to coat with herbs, sesame seeds, crushed peppercorns and oil to form a nice crust. Love this blog, great tips.